40 Times Word Crimes Had To Be Called Out By The English Language Police, As Shared By This Facebook Group

Native speakers (and writers) of English all have their own struggle words. Some people can’t stand the doubling of a specific letter, like aggression versus agression. In other cases, people think there is a second letter where there actually is none, for example, imitate versus immitate. More often than not, this is a result of English not being a phonetic language. 

Many writing systems attempt to just jot down the sounds that a particular word consists of. As logical as this sounds, many languages skip this part, English being one of them. Partially, the French can be blamed, as a lot of constructions in modern English have old French (and Norman) origins, due to William the Conqueror, well, conquering England in 1066. 

To counter this, English orthographer Christopher Upward designed something called cut spelling. The basic idea was to “cut” redundant and silent letters, which would “help” save 8–15% of space when printing written texts and, potentially, reduce the number of spelling mistakes that we all run into regularly. It never really took off because who wants to go through the hassle of remaking the entire spelling system of a language?

As English is spoken around the globe by over 1.5 billion people as a first or second language, it makes sense that large, sweeping changes might not be that realistic to implement. It’s also a language without a “central” authority, with different spelling, pronunciation, and slang depending on where one is. Researchers call this a pluricentric language, meaning that different strains develop and intermix without one being regarded as the “official” variant. 

The result is that most variants of English are mutually intelligible, though there are always many anecdotes about thick accents from one English-speaking country or another. It also has a global reach, both due to colonial history and mass media. These days, English can be referred to as a true “lingua franca,” as it is often used when both parties don’t share a common language. 

Attempts to make a “neutral” global means of communication have led to the creation of “Globish,” a somewhat uninspiring name for a language. The idea, created by Jean-Paul Nerrière, was to have something that was not tied down by the cultural weight of English and also incorporate elements from other languages around the world. Nevertheless, its largest “lender” of words was still English (around 1500 words) and it has not really taken off at the moment.

English is so predominant that some scholars believe it might lead to premature language death. As it is tied up with employment, research, and a lot of popular media, English remains one of the top choices for people to learn, at the cost of acquiring a different language. The unfortunate result is that it introduces alien words and idioms into languages where they don’t belong, supplanting the more unique original structures.